Unidentified

Picture ID 96148

Comments & ID Thoughts

Trying to figure this guy out. Initially, I thought black widow, but they are rare in my area. I looked how to ID a black widow, and it met all of the criteria. The webbing is cobwebby and weird, long front legs, short third set. Black and bulbous, and hangs upside downish from it's web, however, even in that position, I initially had trouble seeing it's underside. It seems mostly skittish, didn't react to a pen tap, and scurried into a corner when I shined a light on it. With my camera, I was able to catch the belly, and it looks brown, not the common red marks you'd see on a widow. Still, I'd like to know what it is. He or she is living peacefully in a dark corner of my bathroom, although it's by the window so it gets a good amount of light in the daytime, when he hides in a small corner, and as you can see, he or she is creating quite the graveyard of other bugs. I live in a woodsy area in Rhode Island. Let me know what you come up with.

You have the correct family, Theridiidae, the Cobweavers. This looks like a gravid female in genus Steatoda. A common name for them is False Widows. They are see-through when bright light passes through the sides of their bodies. They are shaped like Black Widows, but don’t have any red markings, at least the North American ones. I like your Bug Graveyard description. My kitchen bay windowsill has piles of bug corpses under the knick knacks my False Widows live among. I leave the dead bugs as proof that my house spiders are paying their rent. They are the only kind… Read more »